The following was written by Habib Leyos, a senior at Whitehall High School, as part of the annual student essay competition run by the Can We Talk? student dialogue initiative. Can We Talk? is a program of the Committee of Seventy, Pennsylvania’s oldest and largest good government/civic education nonprofit.

The students responded to the following prompt: “In this anniversary year, how well do you think the American people and their government are doing at upholding equality, human rights and ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’? Whether you think the picture is positive, negative or mixed, please provide a few examples to support your judgment.”

This essay was awarded honorable mention, and the author received $100 as a prize.

BY HABIB LEYOS

February 20, 2026: Five teenage students are arrested after peacefully protesting ICE in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. Images show the police town chief putting a girl in a chokehold. The local community feels unsettled by the same people meant to protect them. Has America strayed from its fundamental values of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?”

Nearly 250 years ago, 56 members of the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence as a symbol of liberty and equality. Yet the man who signed his name so large that anyone “can read [it] without spectacles,” owned slaves, and even Thomas Jefferson, its primary author, enslaved over 600 people.

How could the delegates say that “all men are created equal,” while effectively excluding women, Black people and the poor from voicing their ideas? How could many of the same members, at the Constitutional Convention 11 years later, declare that a slave was of a person?

It is clear that America has not historically upheld its lofty ideals. Though progress has not always been linear, it is a continuous struggle to achieve these core values, even if our founding fathers had different visions.

Slavery continued to exist in the South until its abolition in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment. Despite the Freedmen’s Bureau’s promise of “40 acres and a mule” and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments’ protections, their effectiveness diminished as resolve for racial equality waned.

By the late nineteenth century, Jim Crow laws, sharecropping and segregation were embedded in American society, preventing Blacks from achieving true equality. It was not until a century later that the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 formally outlawed segregation.

However, as the 2020 murder of George Floyd demonstrates, African Americans still face discrimination in their everyday life.

Similarly, it was not until 60 years after the Seneca Falls Convention that women gained the right to vote through the Nineteenth Amendment. Even after that, women still face discrimination in education and employment today.

Therefore, upholding the values of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is not a linear process but one continuously refined. America has never fully upheld those lofty ideals, yet we should continuously strive to achieve them.

There will always be times when these values are not met, such as when the Quakertown police cracked down on a peaceful, student-led protest. In this case, the local government failed to protect the community’s right to protest. The students, protesting recent ICE raids, saw that the federal government was infringing upon the inalienable rights of immigrants, whom they believed should also be given the rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Though events like these challenge us to reflect on whether we are truly a nation of democracy, we are reminded time and time again in history that social progress does not happen overnight but rather through persistent struggle. We should continue to fight for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all, even when progress is gradual and imperfect.